Bush Roses – Easy To Have Around!

There are sev­eral spec­tac­u­lar bush roses read­ily avail­able to us in our local nurs­eries, some are well know to the avid gar­dener, while oth­ers, to my amaze­ment, still remain unfa­mil­iar. Need­less to say, they are no sub­sti­tute for stem roses if you want cut flow­ers in the house (stem roses hold the flower longer once cut, give you much more length on a longer stem and are unlim­ited in vari­ety and color.) Bush roses on the other hand are very heavy bloomers, gen­er­ally don’t get any taller than 2’ to 3’ and require “shear­ing” rather than prun­ing in Jan­u­ary. In addi­tion to all these good traits, they gen­er­ally are pest and dis­ease free. Rust and black spot, the major trou­ble­mak­ers to roses, seem to play a lesser role with bush roses. They work won­der­fully as a showy hedge or can be incor­po­rated in plant­ing areas to com­pli­ment your exist­ing land­scape. The most impres­sive ones, and the lesser known are:

Tomora – 3’ high
Com­pact rose, with gor­geous apricot-pink-yellow flower. Shaped like deep cups in the style of the roman­tic roses of past cen­turies. Leaves have a red tinge to them which makes a stun­ning con­trast to the flower. Scented.

Sim­plic­i­ties
White and red sim­plic­i­ties are very attrac­tive and take quite a bit of shade com­pared to other bush roses. When kept at about 2’ they are gen­er­ally quite good bloomers, not any­where as impres­sive as the (other two) above men­tioned, and fill out nicely. Left to grow any taller they tend to look rather “skin­ney”. They also come in pink and yel­low. The pink is def­i­nitely the least attrac­tive of the bunch. The yel­low is awfully good look­ing. The leaf is such a dark green, and shiny, so it com­ple­ments the yel­low won­der­fully.
In my opin­ion, these are excel­lent choices for your gar­den. All roses need full sun, light after­noon shade (later in the day) is good in the hot months. Remem­ber, good drainage is essen­tial, as with all plants, and don’t for­get to feed them through­out the grow­ing sea­son. If you mulch the soil around the base of the rose, you will help con­serve the mois­ture and keep down the weeds at the same time.